The Atlantic apologizes for Scientology ad

1/15/13 12:37 PM EST

The Atlantic apologized today for running a "sponsored content" advertisment featuring an article written by the Church of Scientology.

In a statement released today, the editors said they "screwed up" by running the advertisment, which looked like a normal Atlantic article except for a small box at the top that read, "Sponspored Content":

We screwed up. It shouldn't have taken a wave of constructive criticism — but it has — to alert us that we've made a mistake, possibly several mistakes. We now realize that as we explored new forms of digital advertising, we failed to update the policies that must govern the decisions we make along the way. It's safe to say that we are thinking a lot more about these policies after running this ad than we did beforehand. In the meantime, we have decided to withdraw the ad until we figure all of this out. We remain committed to and enthusiastic about innovation in digital advertising, but acknowledge—sheepishly—that that we got ahead of ourselves. We are sorry, and we're working very hard to put things right.

The article was not drastically different from sponsored content pieces that appear as advertisements in print magazines, though a few of our followers on Twitter said they didn't know the article was sponsored the first time they read it.

Like all other corporate apologies, of course, this one doesn’t cover all the relevant bases. Here, the missing chunk is just precisely the mistake for which The Atlantic is apologizing. Was the screw-up in the accepting of an advertorial from Scientology? Was it in the presentation? Was it in the handling of the comments? What? That’s a line of inquiry worthy of further pursuit.